The power bahus of Uttar Pradesh
The kings of the ruling family of India's heartland -- father Mulayam Singh Yadav, Samajwadi party supremo, and son Akhilesh Yadav, UP chief minister -- are at war.
And as on any chessboard, the queens have emerged as the power centres. Monali Sarkar introduces us to Dimple Yadav and Aparna Yadav.
'I thank Sehwag for encouraging hate'
'Someone told me on Facebook that 2017 will be the last year of my life.'
'I am speaking up only because innocent students were physically abused and that is not correct.'
'Forces in Delhi are manipulating a bloodless coup'
'One thing is clear from what happened last night; both sides are being manipulated by the same party with a lot of wrong inputs.'
'I see a hand in Delhi doing the puppet act on both sides.'
Modi, you have broken my heart
'What has hit me between the eyes is Modi's seeming utter contempt for public perception of the yogi being an unrepentant bigot who also carries the baggage of many criminal cases against him,' says B S Raghavan, the distinguished civil servant.
'Do they not consider me a Hindu?'
'These people are not concerned about Hindu, Muslim, Sikh or Christian -- they are only concerned about being in power,' Akhilesh Yadav tells Rediff.com's Archana Masih in his first interview after the election results.
'After UP results, I doubt if the Indian voter is smart'
'We worked hard, brought a very positive manifesto saying this is what we have done and this is what we will do.'
'But people liked something else.'
'They didn't like expressways, they want a bullet train.'
'I have realised that in a democracy, the poor doesn't know what they want.'Death for Kulbhushan Jadhav: 'Hit Pakistan hard'
'We have to hit Pakistan in such a manner where it hurts them the most.'
How did Indrani get the hair dye?
'People wondered aloud why she had given up on the aging, getting-day-by-day-more-infirm avatar. And was freshly blooming.'
Rediff.com's Vaihayasi Pande Daniel reports from the Sheena Bora trial.
Lt. Umar Fayaz's death may be a turning point in Kashmir
'In times to come this will be considered a watershed event, but only if the establishment can see the flag which is up and the straws in the wind which are flying,' says Lieutenant General Syed Ata Hasnain (retd).
'The longer people believe in Modi, greater will be their disappointment'
'India's nationalism has always been an exceptional and great experiment.' 'We said you don't have to give up your language, your lifestyle or your religion in order to be an Indian national.' 'Nowhere in the world could you find on such a large scale such a democratic experiment of nation building based on diversity.' 'That is the greatness of India's nationalism and we are on the verge of losing that greatness.'
The woman behind the new cattle sale law
'The idea behind the new rules is that slaughter markets must buy directly from the farms as is the case in the bloody world.'
'The cattle markets have become centres for the organised beef mafia.'
In Bihar, Nitish Kumar is the biggest loser
Nitish Kumar knows he has lost his credibility with his opportunistic hopping. He is now a much weaker ally of the BJP than he was before and more dispensable.
Mohammad Sajjad's insights into the political drama in Patna.
How Modi plans to deal with China
'Modi's China diplomacy signals a great change in India's attitude towards that nation -- from a defensive posture maintained over several decades to that of equal, controlled aggression,' reveals Uday Mahurkar in his fascinating new book, Marching with a Billion: Analysing Narendra Modi's Government at Midterm.
Modi's remarks reduced Hamid Ansari to his Muslim identity
He was deliberately reducing Ansari to his Muslim identity by linking his career as a diplomat in the Arab world and educationist and his reflections on intolerance with his religion, says Aakar Patel.
Sushma Swaraj startled Modi when she said she would like to be defence minister.
That set the PM thinking, says Rajeev Sharma.
'The Modi government is in panic mode'
'Modi and his team have read the message from the ground.'
'People have started questioning what they have achieved by putting Modi in power.'
'After Modi, Amit Shah, the next big leader is Adityanath'
'The BJP is not the party it was 10 years ago. It has changed. It is emerging like the Congress.'
'Sometimes, I feel the BJP has taken the Congress' space.'
The hit filmmaker who left it all to tend cows
'It's odd, I made Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar which is about winning, but today I feel we live too much in a winning world.'
Mansoor Khan, the director who left Bollywood at his peak for a quieter life, speaks to Rediff.com's Archana Masih at his farm in the Nilgiris.
'My husband can come home because of the CBI'
'He was limping when we first saw him.'
'He said the police told him to accept the charges against him or they would beat him more.'
'I just want my man to come home, I don't want anything else,' she tells Rediff.com's Swarupa Dutt.
